20th Anniversary European Bike Adventure: Day 18, Uppsala to Stockholm
This was the last day of our 6 contiguous days of riding, and in fact the last day of our ride from London to Stockholm. One last 52 mile ride and we would be at our destination!
When we started this last block of riding, 52 sounded like it was nothing. It was the shortest of the 6 days, and a full 30 miles shorter than the day before. At this point, though, we were so tired that 50 miles still seemed very intimidating.
So our plan was to take it very easy, take our time, and try to enjoy as much of it as we could.
Starting with breakfast. Our rations were perilously low at this point. I think we had a couple cookies remaining. But we had to go back through Uppsala to get to Stockholm, so we just rode 6 very hungry miles back the way we'd come the night before, this time much brighter and sunnier, no storms looming.
A little more French and a little less Swedish than we originally sought, but it was food!
We left our fully loaded bikes here and went inside to eat, where we couldn't see the bikes at all. (Bikes were locked, bags were not.) A sign that we were beginning to be more trustful, a sign that we were too tired to care, or a sign that we were hoping someone would steal our stuff so that we'd have to take a train the last 50 miles? You decide!
"The Breakfast Meal". A little of everything. Again, it wasn't exactly what we wanted, but you can be sure we ate every single piece.
Finally full of a sufficient amount of food, we headed out to sightsee on our way out of Uppsala toward Stockholm.
Uppsala Cathedral
Cute little town.
And then.. not a whole lot happened on our way to Stockholm. It was a lovely day, and we rode really, really, really slowly. It was our slowest average pace for the whole trip, possibly including some days where we just rode in the city. We were tired. And we stopped a lot randomly just to take a break.
Also checked a few things off the checklist/request list, including.. a photo of me actually riding! It'd been all #mattbutt up to this point.
#amybutt
And evidently he also took video. So there. Proof I did ride.
And we stopped to take some very silly video of us riding by, because we only had that one video of us riding in a circle around art.
That's us riding AWAY from Stockholm.. and then back toward it again.
That previous video was from the GoPro. I also set my phone up against a water bottle and used that to record the same video. Except, despite both Matt and I working with my phone to get it going.. this is the (trimmed) video of that same ride. Oops. Right. Turn to front-facing camera.
We rode through some pretty areas.
Matt implies we've taken a wrong turn. I try to be funny. Matt tells me that's originally how Denmark was spelled. I am not impressed at his attempts to kill my funny.
And again, it's just generally pretty.
Otherwise nothing really notable happened. UNTIL, that is, we got to the very beginning of the outskirts of Stockholm!
We were riding through this slightly weird little town. I say weird because (a) we rode down this long stretch of bike path next to a long stretch of road that had nonstop identical apartment complexes. It was like 6 city blocks of the same apartment front, but the complex looked like it was only one apartment deep. It looked like a movie set where you only planned to film the very front facade. Creepy.
And (b) because the only other humans out there were a bunch of teenage boys on bikes. School must have just gotten out. And sure, if I actually check my memories, there may have been a few girls and a dad or two. But mostly I just remember a somewhat Village-of-the-Damned-but-with-only-boys-and-they-all-were-on-bikes sort of vibe. Maybe it was just me.
ANYway, I mention this creepy city because midway through it, we passed by a skatepark. With a halfpipe. We laughed and joked that we should go try it on our touring bikes, and rode on. And then a block later, Matt stops and says, "Actually.. I'm going back.."
So we rode back to the halfpipe, and had a little photo session.
Here's one of the resulting photos:
Hardcore touring halfpipe.
And because I'm always (usually) prepared with the GoPro, I hit record as I went over to take photos.
I love my goofy-ass husband.
Definitely one of my favorite parts of the day, and favorite parts of the whole trip.
Honestly after that, it was all "outskirts of Stockholm" until we got to.. actual Stockholm. It was a really nice bike path that went next to a highway, and sometimes it changed sides of the road.
Sometimes it wound through a little park or under an underpass. As we got closer, there were more and more people, until finally we were in the thick of commute-home bike traffic.
Fortunately most people were going AWAY from the city as we rode toward it.
(Note how nearly everyone is wearing spandex and helmets. Polar opposite of the commute traffic in the Netherlands.)
The end was a little stressful. We were so completely exhausted, and our brains were just fried. It was past lunchtime, and we hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast. We were going to try to push through to Stockholm and deal with food once we got there, but at some point I became too hangry to be a good companion, so we made an emergency stop at a shopping center and split a sandwich from Subway. Another Eat Local failure, but it made SUCH a difference in my attitude in the last few miles.
And that's good, because the last few miles were hard. Once again we were entering a big city, trying to use a phone to navigate to a particular destination, during rush hour, with a ton of construction. Fortunately it mostly had good bike lanes and mostly people were well-behaved. There was one section where there was no bike lane, and a lot of cars plus bikes, and I didn't trust my ability to navigate my heavily-laden awkward bike through that mess in the state of mind I was in, so I yelled to Matt that was I walking it, and got myself up on the sidewalk. We walked a block until the bike lane started up again, then got back on the bikes and rode. I super appreciated that Matt respected when I had to wimp out and was okay with that.
And eventually we managed to find our last airbnb of the trip! Which, indeed, was smack dab in the middle of downtown Stockholm.
You're done, little bike! Take a rest in a nice little apartment with a great view!
This was our most expensive airbnb, since we had decided to splurge a little on location and quality, figuring we'd appreciate it here at the end. And we surely did.
It had a big, comfy bed, a full kitchen, a great little balcony with a view, and a bathroom where the toilet and the shower didn't interact at all! And the water was warm, comprehensible, and plentiful.
View from our balcony. It's a weird inner courtyard for the surrounding buildings, but it looks super bizarre from above.
Also there was a washer/dryer combo which we made much use of.
We were SO happy to be done for the day. And done with that block of 6 contiguous days. And done for the trip. What a weird feeling, to have completed something so big and so intimidating. It had seemed impossible when we were planning it, but we had done it!
After a long shower (the shower at this airbnb was far and away the best shower of any airbnb we stayed in), we put on some going-outside-in-a-city clothes (I mean, it was jeans and one of our 2 tshirts, but I hadn't worn anything other than bike clothes and sweatpants (and one of my 2 tshirts) for 6 days now), and we went out to celebrate!
We found a local Swedish place that sounded really tasty, and we headed off that way. It just happened to be in Gamla Stan, which is full of amazing, touristy, beautiful things, so in addition to dinner, we got a lot of sightseeing in.
Tradition was a completely random pick, but it may have been my favorite meal the entire trip. As we were being seated, they asked if we wanted inside or out. Inside was very dark and very full of people and very loud, so I requested outside. And outside was cool and quaint and amazing. If we'd come any later, we probably would have needed a reservation, but we hit the sweet spot right as dinner people were starting to arrive.
We got the chef's tasting menu, and we each picked one of the main courses to share, and we got the wine pairings, because why not? We hadn't had the opportunity to drink in 6 days, why not make up for lost time?
A toast to success and to still liking each other after 18 days of constant, often stressful, togetherness.
It was so delicious. The appetizer course was probably the most delicious food I had for those 3 weeks.
Three different toasts. All I remember is the left one is shrimp, the middle one is eggs and something, and the right one is something covered in roe. And all three were amazing.
And then the steak and cod were also amazing, as was the dessert.
Steak, potatoes, onions?, egg on top.
And our server was just incredibly sweet and friendly, and we chatted a lot, and when she learned what we'd just finished, journey-wise, she went and told the other servers, who also came over and congratulated us. It was just a lovely evening.
Afterward we meandered around Gamla Stan a bit more, then back through Kungsträdgården, which was having some sort of crazy celebration (maybe related to pre-National Day stuff? I have no idea).
Friend.
And then back to our apartment, because already-tired plus lots-of-alcohol equals incredibly tired.
Thus ends our bike trip from London to Stockholm! Mission accomplished! All that was left was to celebrate the next two days in Stockholm. Which didn't exactly go as we might have anticipated, but.. that's a story for day 19.
Total miles for day 18: 57.12 very, very slow miles
Total miles for days 13 through 18: 437 miles
When we started this last block of riding, 52 sounded like it was nothing. It was the shortest of the 6 days, and a full 30 miles shorter than the day before. At this point, though, we were so tired that 50 miles still seemed very intimidating.
So our plan was to take it very easy, take our time, and try to enjoy as much of it as we could.
Starting with breakfast. Our rations were perilously low at this point. I think we had a couple cookies remaining. But we had to go back through Uppsala to get to Stockholm, so we just rode 6 very hungry miles back the way we'd come the night before, this time much brighter and sunnier, no storms looming.
A little more French and a little less Swedish than we originally sought, but it was food!
We left our fully loaded bikes here and went inside to eat, where we couldn't see the bikes at all. (Bikes were locked, bags were not.) A sign that we were beginning to be more trustful, a sign that we were too tired to care, or a sign that we were hoping someone would steal our stuff so that we'd have to take a train the last 50 miles? You decide!
"The Breakfast Meal". A little of everything. Again, it wasn't exactly what we wanted, but you can be sure we ate every single piece.
Finally full of a sufficient amount of food, we headed out to sightsee on our way out of Uppsala toward Stockholm.
Uppsala Cathedral
Click to viewCute little town.
And then.. not a whole lot happened on our way to Stockholm. It was a lovely day, and we rode really, really, really slowly. It was our slowest average pace for the whole trip, possibly including some days where we just rode in the city. We were tired. And we stopped a lot randomly just to take a break.
Also checked a few things off the checklist/request list, including.. a photo of me actually riding! It'd been all #mattbutt up to this point.
#amybutt
And evidently he also took video. So there. Proof I did ride.
And we stopped to take some very silly video of us riding by, because we only had that one video of us riding in a circle around art.
That's us riding AWAY from Stockholm.. and then back toward it again.
That previous video was from the GoPro. I also set my phone up against a water bottle and used that to record the same video. Except, despite both Matt and I working with my phone to get it going.. this is the (trimmed) video of that same ride. Oops. Right. Turn to front-facing camera.
We rode through some pretty areas.
Matt implies we've taken a wrong turn. I try to be funny. Matt tells me that's originally how Denmark was spelled. I am not impressed at his attempts to kill my funny.
And again, it's just generally pretty.
Otherwise nothing really notable happened. UNTIL, that is, we got to the very beginning of the outskirts of Stockholm!
We were riding through this slightly weird little town. I say weird because (a) we rode down this long stretch of bike path next to a long stretch of road that had nonstop identical apartment complexes. It was like 6 city blocks of the same apartment front, but the complex looked like it was only one apartment deep. It looked like a movie set where you only planned to film the very front facade. Creepy.
And (b) because the only other humans out there were a bunch of teenage boys on bikes. School must have just gotten out. And sure, if I actually check my memories, there may have been a few girls and a dad or two. But mostly I just remember a somewhat Village-of-the-Damned-but-with-only-boys-and-they-all-were-on-bikes sort of vibe. Maybe it was just me.
ANYway, I mention this creepy city because midway through it, we passed by a skatepark. With a halfpipe. We laughed and joked that we should go try it on our touring bikes, and rode on. And then a block later, Matt stops and says, "Actually.. I'm going back.."
So we rode back to the halfpipe, and had a little photo session.
Here's one of the resulting photos:
Hardcore touring halfpipe.
And because I'm always (usually) prepared with the GoPro, I hit record as I went over to take photos.
I love my goofy-ass husband.
Definitely one of my favorite parts of the day, and favorite parts of the whole trip.
Honestly after that, it was all "outskirts of Stockholm" until we got to.. actual Stockholm. It was a really nice bike path that went next to a highway, and sometimes it changed sides of the road.
Sometimes it wound through a little park or under an underpass. As we got closer, there were more and more people, until finally we were in the thick of commute-home bike traffic.
Fortunately most people were going AWAY from the city as we rode toward it.
(Note how nearly everyone is wearing spandex and helmets. Polar opposite of the commute traffic in the Netherlands.)
The end was a little stressful. We were so completely exhausted, and our brains were just fried. It was past lunchtime, and we hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast. We were going to try to push through to Stockholm and deal with food once we got there, but at some point I became too hangry to be a good companion, so we made an emergency stop at a shopping center and split a sandwich from Subway. Another Eat Local failure, but it made SUCH a difference in my attitude in the last few miles.
And that's good, because the last few miles were hard. Once again we were entering a big city, trying to use a phone to navigate to a particular destination, during rush hour, with a ton of construction. Fortunately it mostly had good bike lanes and mostly people were well-behaved. There was one section where there was no bike lane, and a lot of cars plus bikes, and I didn't trust my ability to navigate my heavily-laden awkward bike through that mess in the state of mind I was in, so I yelled to Matt that was I walking it, and got myself up on the sidewalk. We walked a block until the bike lane started up again, then got back on the bikes and rode. I super appreciated that Matt respected when I had to wimp out and was okay with that.
And eventually we managed to find our last airbnb of the trip! Which, indeed, was smack dab in the middle of downtown Stockholm.
You're done, little bike! Take a rest in a nice little apartment with a great view!
This was our most expensive airbnb, since we had decided to splurge a little on location and quality, figuring we'd appreciate it here at the end. And we surely did.
It had a big, comfy bed, a full kitchen, a great little balcony with a view, and a bathroom where the toilet and the shower didn't interact at all! And the water was warm, comprehensible, and plentiful.
View from our balcony. It's a weird inner courtyard for the surrounding buildings, but it looks super bizarre from above.
Also there was a washer/dryer combo which we made much use of.
We were SO happy to be done for the day. And done with that block of 6 contiguous days. And done for the trip. What a weird feeling, to have completed something so big and so intimidating. It had seemed impossible when we were planning it, but we had done it!
After a long shower (the shower at this airbnb was far and away the best shower of any airbnb we stayed in), we put on some going-outside-in-a-city clothes (I mean, it was jeans and one of our 2 tshirts, but I hadn't worn anything other than bike clothes and sweatpants (and one of my 2 tshirts) for 6 days now), and we went out to celebrate!
We found a local Swedish place that sounded really tasty, and we headed off that way. It just happened to be in Gamla Stan, which is full of amazing, touristy, beautiful things, so in addition to dinner, we got a lot of sightseeing in.
Tradition was a completely random pick, but it may have been my favorite meal the entire trip. As we were being seated, they asked if we wanted inside or out. Inside was very dark and very full of people and very loud, so I requested outside. And outside was cool and quaint and amazing. If we'd come any later, we probably would have needed a reservation, but we hit the sweet spot right as dinner people were starting to arrive.
We got the chef's tasting menu, and we each picked one of the main courses to share, and we got the wine pairings, because why not? We hadn't had the opportunity to drink in 6 days, why not make up for lost time?
A toast to success and to still liking each other after 18 days of constant, often stressful, togetherness.
It was so delicious. The appetizer course was probably the most delicious food I had for those 3 weeks.
Three different toasts. All I remember is the left one is shrimp, the middle one is eggs and something, and the right one is something covered in roe. And all three were amazing.
And then the steak and cod were also amazing, as was the dessert.
Steak, potatoes, onions?, egg on top.
And our server was just incredibly sweet and friendly, and we chatted a lot, and when she learned what we'd just finished, journey-wise, she went and told the other servers, who also came over and congratulated us. It was just a lovely evening.
Afterward we meandered around Gamla Stan a bit more, then back through Kungsträdgården, which was having some sort of crazy celebration (maybe related to pre-National Day stuff? I have no idea).
Friend.
And then back to our apartment, because already-tired plus lots-of-alcohol equals incredibly tired.
Thus ends our bike trip from London to Stockholm! Mission accomplished! All that was left was to celebrate the next two days in Stockholm. Which didn't exactly go as we might have anticipated, but.. that's a story for day 19.
Total miles for day 18: 57.12 very, very slow miles
Total miles for days 13 through 18: 437 miles